Namu had no idea how the water in the fountain had bubbled and exploded. The teachers had fixed it by dinner, but it was obvious that they suspected a student was responsible because a teacher was stationed nearby, keeping a watchful eye on it the rest of the day. It unnerved Namu for some reason. It had never happened before, and it had been just after that girl had asked him what he had been doing.
Or maybe Namu was unnerved because some student he had never met had approached him and asked about his personal life. He didn’t like the idea of someone spying on what he and Mr. Vero was doing.
He hoped that the fountain incident had scared the girl off and she would stay away from him now. He couldn’t deal with anyone else on top of Lily trying to figure out what he was doing or what was happening with him.
He barely knew himself.
He needed to fix himself and he needed to find a way to destroy the door. Then he would have time for questions. And he could take Lily up on their offer to help him follow his own dreams.
Namu rolled over in his bed. It had been over an hour, and he was still unable to sleep. Too many questions were nagging at him. Too many questions he wanted answers to, but the only way to figure them out was to wait.
Unless…
He suddenly felt as though the bag of runes from his class last year that sat at the bottom of his dresser drawer was somehow pulsing, begging to be used.
He groaned. He was growing delusional.
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He threw off his covers.
Normally, he wouldn’t do this. Normally, he detested divination. But he couldn’t let every single question he had weighing on him sit in his head and slow his mind. He would get nothing done that way. What was wrong with throwing at least one question out to the world and leaving it to the gods?
He tore open his drawer and pulled out the black bag. While some students had many runes, he only had the ones of Freya given for completing the class he had taken last year.
He had only used the runes a handful of times with Lily, mostly in class, and had forgotten most of the spreads, but the fastest and easiest one was impossible to forget. He just hoped it would give him a decent answer; one that would calm his mind enough for him to sleep.
He spilled the runes out onto the floor and closed his eyes. Then, with his right hand, he felt for the wooden chips and took four away from the others before separating one from the three in a line. He knew he could have picked three out of the bag, one at a time, but he knew himself too well: he was too impatient and would give up on the reading after just one bad tile.
He opened his eyes.
He moaned. All the tiles were reversed, their blank sides staring up at him.
He flipped over the one he had separated from the others to show him the nature of his question. It was Fehu, as in Lily’s floor. It meant suffering and having lost something of value when in reverse.
So that was the road he and the tiles were going down…
He flipped over the first of the other three.
Raido, as in his floor, meaning disruptions and things that might go wrong.
Oh great…. This was backfiring. And to think he had hoped this reading might bring him an ounce of peace.
The next one. Thurisaz. Secrets, enemies, luck running out.
And lastly, Wunjo. Period of unhappiness. Personal decisions postponed.
He swept the runes away, scattering them across the floor.
Well, screw the runes. He was not about to put his personal decisions aside. He would make them happen. He would heal himself. He would destroy that door.
He would find himself again, whether the world was against him or not.